U.S. details city cover-up

Mayor's aides destroyed evidence of patronage, feds allege

Aides to Mayor Richard Daley shredded documents and erased computer files to try to cover up how they guaranteed City Hall jobs and promotions for applicants with political or union clout, including city workers who "did not know what they were doing," federal prosecutors said Monday.

The government laid out its case in the greatest detail yet, exactly one month before four Daley aides are scheduled to go on trial for allegedly playing broad roles in the "massive fraud" scheme. Prosecutors said the scheme was designed to circumvent a federal court order restricting political hiring and reward campaign workers for the mayor and his allies.

City officials acted to conceal the hiring scheme since the 1990s, authorities said. The alleged cover-up efforts clash with the defense strategy of the Daley aides, who said last week that the mayor's office fielded political job recommendations in a widely known and completely legal process that was an open secret at City Hall.

The federal government has granted immunity from prosecution to at least five current or former city officials for testifying in the case against Robert Sorich, Tim McCarthy, John Sullivan and Patrick Slattery, the new records show.

Government witnesses said officials in the mayor's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs would tell city supervisors whom they wanted to hire from lists of applicants, often with no regard for their true qualifications for the jobs. Daley's patronage chief Sorich and other city officials then would tell the Personnel Department to make sure that unqualified candidates were nonetheless placed on a list of those who were eligible for City Hall openings.

Sorich, McCarthy--another Intergovernmental Affairs official--and Slattery have ties to the Daley family's political power base, the 11th Ward Democratic Organization run by the mayor's brother John. Slattery and Sullivan both worked for the Streets and Sanitation Department.

The new 98-page court filing also outlines new allegations about the roles that the pro-Daley Hispanic Democratic Organization and its leaders played in winning city jobs for HDO's members.

"Individual A"--identified previously as former Intergovenmental Affairs director and HDO Chairman Victor Reyes--arranged for the promotion of an HDO member to mason inspector in 1995 even after a Sewers Department official told Reyes that the worker was suspended for showing up late and leaving early, according to the filing.

His lawyer, Thomas Breen, said Reyes did nothing wrong: "Nobody was promoted or hired with the OK or approval of Victor Reyes because of their political association with HDO."

Prosecutors alleged that former Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Al Sanchez, a longtime HDO leader, was among the Daley loyalists who sought jobs from Intergovernmental Affairs. Sanchez was described but not identified by name in the federal filing. His lawyer, Daniel Pierce, declined to comment.

The new filing outlined several cases where poorly qualified applicants who were members of pro-Daley political groups allegedly got jobs thanks to their political sponsors.

In 2002 Sorich allegedly directed the hiring of a politically connected house drain inspector who failed to show up at a work site to check a sewer connection, causing sewage to back up in a home. Authorities said the current supervisor of house drain inspectors told them that inspector and two others "were poor choices and did not know what they were doing."

And a political worker for Daniel Katalinic, a former Streets and Sanitation official who has admitted his role in the hiring scheme, allegedly was promoted to full-time truck driver in 2004 based on a rigged interview. Shortly after getting the job, the worker "whacked" a city truck into a viaduct that was too low for the truck to clear and was suspended for 20 days, according to authorities.

Another case involved the 19-year-old son of a high-ranking union official, who allegedly was hired as a building inspector in 2004 because of his connections. An embarrassed Daley said at the time that the city was duped and Andrew Ryan was fired for falsifying his job application.

But prosecutors alleged that top officials in Intergovernmental Affairs pushed to hire Ryan, son of a Carpenters Union Local 13 leader. Christopher Kozicki, the Buildings Department's managing deputy commissioner with 11th Ward Democratic ties, allegedly revised his score for Ryan's job interview, giving him a higher rating so he would qualify to be hired. Kozicki is among officials given immunity from prosecution in return for their cooperation.

Stan Kaderbek, who was then Buildings Commissioner, told Kozicki that hiring Ryan and another young, unqualified son of a union official "would help in maintaining good relations" with the union, authorities said.

Lawyers for the defendants again said Monday that they intend to fight the charges. The mail fraud trial is to begin May 10.